Plea for better care after patient's death

READING coroner Joe Pim is calling on the Government to improve care for mental health patients after a schizophrenic woman fell to her death the day after missing an appointment with her psychiatric nurse.

Claire Roderick, from George Street, west Reading, was pronounced dead at the scene after falling from a town centre multi-storey car park on Friday, May 3.

Her shoes were found placed neatly side by side on the top level.

She had been due to see to the community psychiatric nurse the previous day, having left Fair Mile Hospital a fortnight before, but never showed up.

Reading Coroner's Court heard on Tuesday how the 28-year-old had a seven-year history of mental illness and was a regular patient at the hospital, but Dr Pim said more care was needed for those who had recently completed treatment.

He said: "I am concerned about the number of people who appear to kill themselves because the

authorities - be it health or social services - have no authority to keep a better watch on them.

"This is one of those occasions when I ought to write to the Department of Health. Maybe the Government can change the law."

The court heard how Miss Roderick's mental health problems coincided with her taking ecstasy during her final year of a degree in French at Nottingham University.

Her father Guy Roderick, now living in Dorset but who had lived around Pangbourne, said Claire was taking the drug around once a week when her mental health problems started.

He said: "She was mentally ill, definitely, and I personally believe that the drugs were the original cause. She was fine until the third year at university."

Claire first went into Fair Mile in Christmas 1995, with what doctors described as a schizo-affective disorder.

Consultant psychiatrist Dr Farooq Ahmad said she would suffer from hallucinations, mood swings and irrational beliefs. He said she also tended to act impulsively and her thought processes were disorganised. The drugs were not the cause of the schizophrenia, he said, but could have made her illness worse.

She was back in hospital in December 1996 and again in May the following year.

Then in June 1999 she was sectioned to hospital having been found lying on the railway track outside Slough station.

Mr Roderick told the court: "She chose the Intercity 125 line but the train passed over her. She was lying parallel to the tracks - she was found after the train passed over the top of her."

Further treatment at Fair Mile followed in February and May 2000 - the latter visit lasting five months - and again in October 2001.

She was found wandering the streets of Wokingham on February 23 this year, confused and

hallucinating, and admitted again, but disappeared from the wards only to turn up at Charing Cross Hospital three days later.

Throughout February and March she was in and out of Fair Mile, sometimes leaving without a word but always phoning in and returning when requested.

By early April she was ‘settled and co-operative' on the ward with no symptoms of schizophrenia and doctors discharged her on April 18.

She missed her appointment with the community psychiatric nurse on May 2, but phoned on Friday, May 3, to apologise and rearrange the meeting. Claire died at 7.25pm that day.

Dr Pim said he was fairly certain she took her own life but recorded an open verdict as there was too little evidence to support a verdict of suicide.

Speaking after the inquest Mr Roderick said there was too little care for the mentally ill once they left hospital.

He said: "This is someone who was so ill she was sectioned involuntarily for six months and yet after she is released no-one sees her for two weeks. It's too long for people like that."